Biomass generates energy. Forest products manufacturers have known this for generations and have produced their own electricity on-site using bark, sawdust and other waste wood.

“Woody biomass is a renewable resource that has the potential to supply 12-13 percent of the electricity used in South Carolina,” said Dr. Tim Adams, the commission’s resource development director.

The new biomass harvesting guidelines are aimed at protecting water quality, plant and animal diversity, soil nutrition/quality, and site productivity in and around harvesting operations. These are places where logging residue and other woody materials accumulate.

The recommendations build upon existing and successful best-management practices used by landowners and timber harvesters to minimize environmental impacts and stay within compliance of regulations.

As was recently announced, SCFC sees a 93 percent compliance rate with its guidelines for harvesting timber. Logging, road building, site preparation, and even tree planting are intensive operations and reputable operators in South Carolina can be trusted to work in such a way as to protect the land and water. On the national scale, South Carolina is a success story in this area.

Wood demand is expected to increase dramatically in coming decades, SCFC says. The global population and even wood use per person both are on the rise as emerging markets and improving standards of living worldwide become the norm. As the “wood basket” of the world, the Southeastern United States is well positioned to play a major role.

View the BIOMASS BMP’s for S.C. ( here); http://trees.sc.gov/mbiomasssupp.pdf

Read more at:http://thetandd.com/business/state-develops-guidelines-for-woody-biomass-harvest/article_c87d41b2-b9aa-11e2-b093-001a4bcf887a.html

The research could allow farmers who have been growing tobacco for generations to continue the tradition for a different purpose, university officials say, adding that an infrastructure established to serve the diminishing cigarette, cigar and snuff markets could be repurposed.

“There are several reasons we are modifying tobacco to produce biofuel,” said Peggy Lemaux, UC Cooperative Extension specialist. “It is a high biomass crop. If you want to extract oil, then the more biomass you have, the more oil you get. And, since tobacco is not a food source, tobacco production for biofuel would not have an impact on global food markets or find its way into the food supply. Finally, tobacco farmers are anxious to produce a product that is more acceptable to the public.”

Tobacco plants, which normally don’t carry high levels of oil, are getting a boost through engineering. A research consortium that includes UC scientists and researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Kentucky is taking genes, primarily from algae, that produce oil and inserting them into tobacco plants to make oils in leaves.

“We hope the new plant will make the same kind of oils that algae do,” Lemaux said. “We can then use organic solvents to extract the oils out of the leaves.”

While encouraged by preliminary results, Lemaux said more research will be required before tobacco plants that produce biofuel at commercial levels will be available to growers.

The research is funded with a three-year, $4.8-million grant from a DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy program termed PETRO, Plants Engineered to Replace Oil. ARPA-E funds high-risk, high-reward research projects to find potential alternatives to fossil fuels.

from 25 x 25 weekly newsletter

Read more:http://www.biomassmagazine.com/articles/8815/nippon-paper-industries-develops-torrefied-pellets

The production of energy using a renewable material such as wood can have positive impacts on all three legs of the sustainability stool – society, the economy, and the environment. So finds a report released today by the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (Endowment). The report, “Financing Woody Biomass Clusters: Barriers, Opportunities, and Potential Models for the Western U.S.” looks specifically at how community-scale wood-fueled facilities could aid in addressing burgeoning forest health issues and expanding losses due to wildfires.

“Biomass energy development has the potential to foster economic development, address wildfires and associated risks and costs, and reduce dependence on fossil fuels,” says Jeff Howe, President of Dovetail Partners and a report contributing author. “There are critical strategic, organizational, and financial issues that need to be addressed in order to realize the considerable potential of biomass energy. First and foremost, biomass energy needs to become an attractive and financially viable investment alternative. This can be aided by strategically applying a wide array of market-based, as well as incentive- and grant-based financial tools.”

The report is part of a series of works produced by the Endowment in a collaborative effort with the USDA Forest Service to assess the potential of markets for low-value wood to enhance forest health while advancing energy security.

Read the report: http://dovetailinc.org/files/DovetailBiomassReport0513.pdf

A Czech Republic company says it has found an abundant, long-term source of energy in South Texas to help European utilities produce electricity.

The energy source has nothing to do with the Eagle Ford Shale.

The source is the hated mesquite wood.

“We looked all over the world for a stable and big source of biomass. We found the source in Texas,” Zdenek Mayer said. He’s business director and CEO for GreenHeart Energy LLC, the Texas division of GreenHeart Energy, based in Duchcov, Czech Republic.

GreenHeart Energy LLC has selected San Antonio for its Texas company’s headquarters — for legal, banking and accounting purposes — but most of its activities will occur near and in Corpus Christi.

Read more:http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/04/28/europe-energy-found-in-corpus/#11714-9

The Pew Charitable Trusts has published the 2012 edition of its “Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?” report. The analysis offers an update of Pew’s reports tracking clean energy investments over the past nine years. Underlying data for the report was combined for Pew by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

According to Pew, overall investment in the clean energy sector last year was five times greater than it was in 2004. However, 2012 investment levels worldwide decreased by 11 percent from 2011, reaching a level of $269 billion. Looking at the data in three-year increments, Pew said the average clean energy investment has increased by at least $90 billion triennially, averaging $64 million per year from 2004 to 2066, $156 billion per year in 2007 through 2009 and $245 billion per year from 2010 through 2012.

The report notes that global investment in biomass/waste-to-energy, geothermal, marine and small hydro technologies fell by 29 percent to $13.5 billion in 2012. The biofuels sector also experienced a drop of 47 percent from 2011 to 2012, when global investments reached only $2.6 billion.

Read more: http://www.biomassmagazine.com/articles/8914/pew-releases-clean-energy-investment-report

Download the report: http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/News/Press_Releases/Clean_Energy/clen-G20-report-2012-FINAL.pdf

Logging residues present a substantial near term opportunity as a bioenergy feedstock, but contaminants that can reduce their value can be introduced during collection. We studied the use of a trommel screen to reduce ash levels in ground forest harvest residues at time of production. Eight treatments of initial harvest type, grinder size, residue age, and screen usage were applied to southern pine plantation residues in the coastal plain of South Carolina, USA. Using the screen, the average ash levels of screened roundwood and clean chipped residue was reduced from 4.0% to 1.4% and from 11.9% to 6%, respectively. Average energy density increased 2–5% by screening. Without screening the feedstock, large grinder utilization with roundwood residues was 58% while the addition of a trommel screen reduced utilization to 47%. Screened roundwood residues were consistently more costly to produce than unscreened roundwood or screened clean chipped residue with either grinder size under a number of economic and operational scenarios on either a load weight or energy content basis. The screened clean chip systems and the unscreened roundwood material provided the most competitive residue on a cost per unit of energy basis.

Read more:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biombioe.2013.02.032

or http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096195341300113X

http://ethanolproducer.com/articles/9751/groundwork-begins-on-florida-sweet-sorghum-to-ethanol-plant

Site preparation has begun and plans are being finalized for a formal groundbreaking ceremony to be held in the next few weeks at the country’s first sweet sorghum-to-ethanol plant being built by Southeast Renewable Fuels LLC in Hendry County, 15 miles of Clewiston, Fla.

The process technology for 20 MMgy plant is being supplied by Uni-Systems do Brasil Ltda, CEO Aaron Pepper said, and the facility is being built by them as well. Financing was arranged through the Bank of Brazil. “We give a big thanks to Uni-Systems, the Bank of Brazil, the state of Florida and Hendry County,” he added. “They’ve all been very supportive of our project.”

The groundbreaking has long been awaited. The project received a $2.5 million Florida Department of Energy grant in March 2009, had lined up financing and begun the permitting process in early 2010 when the progress was halted due to a third party issue, “that had nothing to do with us,” Pepper said.

The project is finally moving forward. Groundwork began in early April and the detailed earthwork preparing for the laying of foundations should begin in a couple of weeks, Pepper said. The first equipment is expected to arrive on site in October and the facility is scheduled to come online in January 2015. The footprint of the plant is being planned to allow the eventually doubling of its size, he added.

The integrated facility will include power generation and CO2 capture. The plant will produce 25 megawatts of electricity from bagasse in a combined heat and power plant. A yet-unnamed company will feed the projected 65,000 tons of CO2 into a liquid gas plant to be co-located on the 100-acre ethanol plant site. A letter of intent has been signed for for the CO2 capture, Pepper said. An offtake agreement is in place with Shell for the ethanol itself.

Located in the middle of Florida’s sugarcane production area, the ethanol plant will require about 25,000 acres of sweet sorghum production, figuring two harvests per year.  “During three years of field trials we were getting yields well above the published reports,” Pepper said. “And at 30 tons per acre, we actually might only need 18,000 acres of production.” They expect to be able to produce 800 gallons of ethanol per acre of feedstock.

The Clewiston project is located between Florida’s two big sugarcane processors, he added, both of whom have been supportive of the sweet sorghum project. “There’s a few advantages to sweet sorghum,” he explained. “First and foremost, it matures in four months, where sugarcane takes a full year.” Sweet sorghum is also reported to have two-thirds of the water and fertilizer requirement and will fit into the crop rotation needed by the main sugarcane crop. “There are 500,000 acres of cane grown in Florida,” he explained. “And 20 percent is fallow in a given year.”

With the Clewiston project being built in the eastern edge of Hendry County, Pepper said planning has begun for a second facility that would ideally be located in the western part of the county. The project partners are also considering the addition of bolt-on technology to convert part of the bagasse into cellulosic ethanol.

Go to website: http://www.wood2energy.org/Database%20Connection.htm

The digestive tracts of large herbivores like cows and horses, which can digest lignin-rich grasses, have been a well-trodden path for scientists seeking such enzymes. But in the past, their focus has been mainly on enzymes in bacteria, rather than fungi, which include yeasts and molds. The goal: Take the genes that produce such enzymes from gut fungi and genetically engineer them into yeasts. Yeasts already are used in time-tested processes on an industrial scale to produce huge quantities of antibiotics, foods and other products. That proven production technology would mean clear sailing for commercial production of biofuels.

O’Malley explained that several genes from gut fungi are unique compared to bacteria, since the fungi grow invasively into plant material. Also, they secrete powerful enzyme complexes that work together to break down cellulose. Until now, however, fungi have largely been ignored in the search for new biofuel enzymes — and for good reason.

“There was relatively little scientific knowledge about fungi in the digestive tracts of these large animals,” O’Malley explained. “They are there, but in very low numbers, making it difficult to study. The low concentrations also fostered a misconception that fungi must be unimportant in digestion of cellulose. And it is extremely difficult to isolate and grow these fungi to study their enzymes.”

O’Malley’s research group at the University of California, Santa Barbara, collaborated with researchers at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. They worked with a gut fungus isolated from horse feces and identified all the genetic material that the fungus uses to manufacture enzymes and other proteins. This collection of protein-encoding material — the fungus’s so-called “transcriptome” — led to the identification of literally hundreds of enzymes capable of breaking through that tough lignin in plant cell walls and the cellulose within. The team now is shifting through that bounty to identify the most active enzyme and working on methods for transferring the genetic machinery for its production into the yeast currently used in industrial processes.

For the complete Biomass article see:http://www.biomassmagazine.com/articles/8878/enzymes-from-horse-feces-could-streamline-biofuel-production